Bittersweet Insubordination
by AceOfSpades22
Summary: When a man falls in love, nothing can stop him from reaching the object of his affection. When a man betrays Her, She stops at nothing in her attempts to reclaim him. But, when a man thinks She has taken his treasure of sorts away from him, he doesn't care what he loses, he will find out what happened.


**A new SpUK. How exciting! :D This one is different from my other ones. See if y'all can figure out why.**

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A sun kissed captain sat at his desk in his quarters reading and rereading something deep into the night. The longer he read, the more his heart died little by little inside of his greed blackened chest. As the moon hit directly overhead, he could no longer force back the crystalline tears as they broke past the dam he had built to contain them, and slowly the glistening drops streaked down his face, leaving tracks where they repeatedly slid down the caramel flesh. Still he reread the words on a tattered and torn piece of yellowed parchment, the calligraphy beautiful and familiar, painful to look at, but too addicting to remember the hand behind the swirling letters to not.

Puffed up verdant eyes stared at the parchment again as battle scarred fingers brushed over the letters, ingraining the feeling of the indentation to memory. Why couldn't he simply throw the worn parchment from his ship and rid himself of all the pain and reminiscing merely seeing it brought on? It was unhealthy, his obsession to the tattered thing. In a surge of anger, he folded the parchment, picked up one of many discarded, drained bottles of rum that lay haphazardly scattered around his scarred desk, and shoved it inside, a vicious, grieved expression on his face.

His brash actions were far from over at that, for he palmed another colored, ornate bottle and brought the head to his lips, the liquid setting fire to his innards as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the intoxicating concoction. A haze shrouded his brain, quick in its homecoming from the forgotten about consummation of the stuff not long before. The alcohol induced miasma lead him to reclaim the imprisoned parchment and rush from his quarters, a stumbling, emotional fool. A strangled sob fell from his lips, though none of his crew dared to approach, terrified of the wrath that would ascend upon them if they attempted to admonish or console him.

The grand, crimson and gold adorned captain staggered more and more the closer he got to the port side of his magnificent vessel. His coat flapped and the feather that decorated his resplendent hat quivered as the sigh of the sea buffeted him, smelling of brine and chaos. The waves mesmerized him for a handful of fluttering heartbeats that spanned a length equivalent of all the years he had been sailing. The bottle clutched in his white knuckled hand was forgotten as the song of the sea, deadly, beautiful and soul claiming reached his ears as it spun a tale of hopeless infatuation.

The destructive tale was woven from the sigh of the Mistress herself, laughing in the face of the captain's agony by the way She hurled her ever changing body at his craft, tossing and turning it about as Her rage at the captain's betrayal brewed into something awful. Something lethal, life-claiming, utterly devastating in Her pride quelling power. She spoke to him tauntingly of a lost love, star-crossed and forbidden, put to rest by Her caustic jealousy. Rumbling, overpowering laughter boomed around him as She called to the heavens to allow Her tears to be brought forth in a spine chilling shower that soaked the defeated captain to the bone. She clawed at the sky in blinding flashes, attempting to tear the captain's sails from their masts, wanting to reclaim him for Her own as She had so many others before him.

The prideful, drunken captain was reckless in his deviation of the path his Mistress required him to follow. He pocketed the ornate glass decanter that held the last words of his shipwrecked companion and stared dead into the eyes of his enraged, shrieking Mistress as he forced his men onwards, far into the night. No amount of furious tears, flashing nails that raked the heavens, howling demands that whipped his sodden linens all about and tore his exceptional captain's hat from his head, nor booming, deafening rolls of malevolent laughter could shake the captain's conviction to defy the will of Her. He would not give in to Her as many others had, for he still had a mission to complete, a treasure to recapture.

Furious at his defiance, She lashed out at him with a single raking claw, and in Her wake, She breathed tongues of scorching conflagrations that licked greedily at the very planks of the crimson garbed captain's ship. Great columns of flame engulfed the entirety of the deck, jumping with a miserable cacophony of jeers and crackling taunts from man to man, leaving them to screech in sheer agony as their flesh was seared off the bone.

The knowledge that the captain had condemned all of his loyal sailors to death and the fiery depths of Hell, weighed on the man's very being, hunching in his shoulders. The last thing his men would see would be their splendid, beloved captain aging thousands of years before their eyes. The last thing they'd see would be the captain falling to his knees with a great bellow of pain as She gripped his heart in an attempt to tear the vital, crimson pumping organ from his caving in chest. They last thing they'd see would be the demise of their cherished captain.

As another booming laugh met his ears though, he straightened, a truly terrible, commanding grace consuming his soul and restoring unto him his will. She could destroy his ship with tongues of fire, burn his men like witches of the blackest magic, but his spirit and determination were far from broken. A weak, heartened cheer sounded from his crew as he pressed through the flames to a dangling lifeboat on that port side. Verdant eyes resembling emeralds, hard and flashing in insubordination, glared wrathfully at Her as he hefted his worn battle ax and cut the craft free, sending it crashing into Her churning maw. Saying a pray in his native tongue, beautiful and short, he clutched the weapon to his chest with one hand, the bottled parchment in the other, and leapt from his ship into Her violent clutches far below.

The captain felt out of bodied as he fell, time all but ceasing to exist as Her tears struck him and Her howls deafened him. He could only then truly feel Her rage and power as it constricted him from all sides, contorting in ways unknown to the real world to buffet him about. Yet as he plummeted to the crescendoing turmoil bellow him, all that consumed his waking thoughts was an alabaster face. A face in which every minute detail he remembered as if he were staring directly at that perfect face instead of into the clutches of death. Of Her.

As he made that plunge that could alter the course of his life, he could feel the smooth, soft skin beneath his fingertips, slightly sticky from the usually so tender sigh of the Mistress. Silken strands of flaxen hair brushed across his cheeks, a stark contrast against Her striking, biting tears. The bright eyes, true emeralds all the time in how breathtakingly captivating they were to the withering captain's heart, stared at him. The usually cold, commanding orbs, were melted into such a profound, shattering grief it tore a wailing moan from the captain's cracked lips. Just as he was about to reach out to the porcelain face, his body slammed excruciatingly against Her white capped waves, breaking the illusion of a timeless ethereality.

Such a serene moment being wrenched forcefully from him left the captain floundering, his lungs, nose, eyes clogging with stinging saltwater, slowly trying to asphyxiate him. He couldn't decide which way was up, which way was down and when he thought he had figured it out, he only found himself sinking down, down, down into Her depths, the world around him calming the further down he was pulled. His head spun, his eyes blacked out, but just as he thought he would drown, his chocolate locks were plastered against his face. He was at the surface. A enraged undulation of Her body sent something heavy ramming against the captain's shoulder, forcing him under again before he could clear the viscous water from his shrieking lungs.

It took every ounce of the captain's strength to fight against Her power and claw his way to the surface once more, ax and bottle clutched stubbornly to his heaving chest. Again he was rammed into, but this time he heaved his ax over his head and released it, a soft thunk of blade against wood giving rise to the fact he had found the lifeboat. The craft slammed into his chest as he attempted to board it, forcing him under once more, putting him at Her mercy again. Weighing less, he was thrown about that much more, tumbling head over booted heal over and over until his head spun nauseously. His vision faded faster than before, leaving him blind to the underwater Hell around him, but with that imprisoned parchment clutched in his hands, he forced his way to the surface a finale time.

There was no time to clear the brine from his eyes as he hooked an arm and a leg over the edge of the lifeboat and dragged himself into the fictitious protection of the raft, sputtering until his throat tasted of iron. He had no time to reclaim oxygen into his withered lungs as a fountain of toxins spewed from his mouth, his body weakly attempting to purge its self from the poisons. Sanguine fluid left a deep blackened patch on his shoulder and chest from the brutal impact of the raft when it had rammed into him, and his gold and crimson robes were tattered, drenched, scorched and torn, but he was alive.

She was defeated, as he once again escaped her grasp. Her howls of protest turned into blustery moans of misery; Her tears, piercing before, fell slower, softer, reflecting Her heartbreak. The undulations, the chaotic turmoil, quelled into giant but gentle swells, and her laughter and raking claws disappeared, leaving the captain to rest his aching body inside the raft and watch his burning ship sink into the inky depths of his Mistress. He was alive, She was vanquished, but at what tragic, shattering costs?

The captain hung his head in his worn hands and wept bitterly. It would be impossible to reclaim his lost companion now. All was lost. His chocolate hair hung down around his face, dripping water. The leather cord that tied it up on most occasions missing in action. The honey colored man trembled in his grief, every part of him aching. Despite everything that had transpired, he was so desperately wanting to give up. Cry on his lips, he raised his eyes to the heavens, the clouds still covering the starry sky, and screamed his frustration and agony, but as though his God heard his furious words, the clouds wisped into thin, smoky tendrils, revealing a brilliant full moon that illuminated everything around the grieving, devastated captain.

Awe struck, he followed the path of the brightest moon beam with his tearful verdant gaze and saw off in the distance a small rise of rock. An island. For the briefest of heartbeats he was hopeful, not for his own life and the implications of survival the island entitled, but for his lost treasure. This was around where his companion had been taken from him by Her. A brief spark was rekindled inside him as he took his ax in hand and plunged the blade into the swaying, dreary waves, hopelessly unwavering in his conviction to search for his love regardless the circumstance. If he had to swim the entirety of the world's oceans to find his treasure, he would. If he had to defy his Mistress and lose a thousand ships, he would. If he had to paddle to an unknown island with his valiant battle ax as his oar in the middle of the night after the loss of everything he knew, he would.

The island seemed to move further and further away from him as he dunked the head of his ax into the calmly swelling waves, only his faint hope keeping his churning mind focused on the task at hand instead of at the ache quickly forming in his muscular shoulders. The thought of giving up never crossed traitorously with his mind, only his unwavering resolve to get to the beacon of hope before him. His companion could be there, alive, holed up there just waiting for someone to come to the rescue. Someone like a pirate in tattered, scorched linens, with a gold stud in his ear, the Spanish flag, worn and faded, adorning his head, tied like a bandana, sodden leather boots, and missing his resplendent hat.

He was a hundred meters out when he stood inside the wobbling craft, pocketed the bottled parchment, clutched his glistening ax and leapt into the gently swaying swells. He could swim far faster than he could paddle. The brilliant light of the moon guided his path, the beams never once having shifted from the rise of land as he pulled his body through the sea water with powerful, graceful strokes.

It was awkward, totting around his weapon, but he wouldn't let go no matter the strain it brought on. Not when it slowed him considerably, nor when the handle caught in the loosely packed grains of shell and rock and dirt along the floor. In fact, as it caught against the grit, he rightened himself to walk the rest of the way, every part of him groaning in exhaustion and soreness.

With a valiant swing, he tossed his ax up onto the shore and jogged the last couple meters before collapsing on the moonlit beach with a grunt, verdant eyes quickly hiding behind salt sticky, parchment thin lids. Lassitude tugged down every cell and slowed down every synapse, sleep threatening to pull him under before he could even recall the reason he pushed against all odds to reach this place. Everything slowed as the repetitious thrum of waves reaching out for and reclaiming layer after layer of smoothed bits of sand lulled his overexerted body into a comfortable oblivion. He'd just lay there for a handful of slowing heart beats and then start up his search for his beloved...

When next he was aware of what was all around him, something soft was brushing along the slightly stubbly skin of his cheek and jaw. Eyes still closed, leaving him blind outside his imagination, he assumed at first thought that it was merely his shaggy, chocolate hair, blown onto his face by the breeze that always accompanied any sort of proximity with the sea, but as it repeated meticulously, and he became more aware, he realized that couldn't possibly be it.

He cracked his eyes open ever so slowly, verdant orbs stinging and aching as the weak dawn rays of the sun fell onto them. The soft, warm light left him seeing stars, momentarily blinding him. What was caressing his face? As a weight crawled onto his chest, leaving him half asphyxiated and panicking, he blinked rapidly, clearing the sunspots from his eyes, while his hand frantically sought out his ax, though the weapon was mere centimeters too far for him to wrap his fingers around the staff. What was _touching _him?!

With a roar he surged up and knocked the weight aside, rolling on top of it and pinning it to the ground. If there was something threatening him, it could be a threat to his treasure! His hand grasped for a knife he kept sheathed in his boot, but he froze, completely and utterly stunned when soft eyes, the color and beauty of emeralds peered up at him, equally startled, but brimming with love.

His... His beloved. Companion. Treasure. His lost partner, the one the Mistress tried to claim. The one he had condemned his loyal crew to death for. The one he would swim oceans for. The one he loved forbiddenly, as they were on different sides of a power struggle. The one whose calligraphy he had ingrained in his memory, the feel of the indentation on the parchment in the bottle, the swooping strokes of a pale skinned hand, the smell of the parchment mixed with the brine of the sea. The one he thought had died... Stared up at him in pure adoration.

The resplendent captain, with his tattered, scorched coat of a battered, water faded red and tarnished gold, verdant eyes dull from exhaustion, Spanish flag around his free falling, tangled chocolate locks with boots still drying from his battles, lay on the beach then, with a peaceful heart and mind, hand in that of his beloved's.

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